The Ties That Bind
by bosswoman88
Summary: A look into the past
1. Chapter 1

** So at the end of the last fan fic I wrote, there was talk about Rayna writing an autobiography. I decided the way I'm going to do it is in a separate fic here, cuz we still need a wedding in that other one! Probably each short chapter will be a scene in Rayna's past, like the writer asks her about it and she's remembering it. Of course not every detail she's "remembering" would go into a book…but I thought this would be a really good way to imagine her early years and the beginning of her career…I would love to hear reviews on this idea, hope you like it**!

Rayna closed the door behind Lucy Hayes and leaned against it with her hands on her forehead. "That was crazy, right?" She said to Deacon. "I mean, really. I didn't even know what to say."

"You, speechless?' Deacon teased. "That's a first."

She reached over and smacked his arm gently. "Ha ha."

She still was not at all enthused about the autobiography idea. The girls were all for it. Of course they were. They'd walked in here a half hour ago and fallen instantly in love with Lucy, then ran off to give her a tour of their bedrooms. They thought she was going to make them famous.

Rayna hated to break their bubble by telling her daughters she thought having a country superstar for a mother, and the mayor of Nashville and a famous guitar player as fathers had already made them famous enough for her liking, thank you very much. She would have preferred to keep them out of every single corner of the damn book if possible. But she knew it wasn't. And she also knew that some day Maddie and Daphne were going to be old enough to read it. Hell- the words, "Mom, I googled myself and look what I found" already scared her to death every time she heard them.

"You know," she said with a sigh. "I mean, if I don't do it, what are the chances someone is going to write one five years from now anyway? Some unauthorized pile of garbage with all the facts wrong….ugh, I don't even want to imagine."

"So that's a yes then, huh?" Deacon said. "We're gonna be seeing more of Lucy Hayes?"

Rayna looked like she'd been poleaxed. "Well I don't think I really have a choice now. Would _you_ have said no to that woman?"

He laughed. "I guess not."

"She said I owe her one day a week where she gets to follow me around and ask questions."

"Well that's not so bad, right?"

Rayna made a face. "I guess. Because we both know how much I just l_ove_ talking about myself."

He pulled her into his arms. "At least we know it's going to have a happy ending."

"That," she said. "Is an absolute guarantee."

#######################################

Lucy was there by 8 am on Wednesday morning just like she had promised. She didn't even knock on the front door, just scooted right in with a plate of muffins and a thermos of coffee.Same Yankees hat. Bright yellow pants and a faded gray sweatshirt that said "I'm the boss so get moving."

"I bring my own coffee," she said. "Because I like it extra strong."

_ Really?_ Rayna shot Deacon a look as she ran around like a crazy person packing lunches and double checking backpacks. _Did she just walk right into our house? _

Damn him for looking so amused by this whole thing.

"Mom, don't forget I have rehearsal for the talent show after school," Maddie reminded. "You said you'd pick me up."

"I can pick her up," Deacon said. "In case you get…caught up in things. I'll be at the studio all day anyway."

"Oh, don't change anything you have planned on account of me," Lucy said cheerfully. "I'll just tag along. Just go about your every day business."

"Um….okay," Rayna said cautiously. "Then everybody out the door. We're going to be barely on time. Like always."

"Is Lucy coming with us?" Daphne asked as she snagged a muffin off the plate in passing on her way out the door.

"Well, I guess she is, " Rayna said brightly. "Won't that be fun?"

Oh boy. This was just going to be so much _fun_ she could hardly stand it.

The girls chattered on in the backseat, and gleefully answered Lucy's questions about everything from school to talk of the upcoming marriage between her and Deacon.

Rayna noticed in a hurry that Lucy had a way of getting information without seeming too intrusive. She was an avid observer, once in awhile writing in the notebook that had emerged from her purse. Asking questions that naturally led into conversation Rayna probably would have never brought up on her own. She'd been interviewed by a hell of a lot of reporters in her life, and 90% of the time they went for the jugular halfway through the questions. They didn't care about the truth. They cared about the dirt. But this was different. Lucy was different. She was a writer, not a reporter.

She had to admit to herself by the time they bid the girls goodbye in front of the school and headed for the next stop- the supermarket- that maybe Deacon was right. It wouldn't be so bad. But by the end of the morning, Rayna was already dying to know what was in that notebook. What did it say already after only a few hours?

"So, Lucy said, as she sat at the counter and watched Rayna mixing up cupcakes for Daphne's class party the next day. "Tell me about the first memories you have as a little girl."

Right down to business.

Rayna paused for a minute and looked up from stirring the mixing bowl. "Oh gosh," she said slowly. "Well I guess that would be…my father. My very earliest memories are of my father."

"Not of your mother?"

She hesitated. "I don't like talking about him much. He did some awful things in his lifetime."

"Listen," Lucy said in that no-nonsense but gentle way she had. "For this to work you have to trust me. You can tell me whatever you want," Lucy said. "But ultimately what goes on the pages belongs to you. They're your memories. The good ones and the bad ones."

She sighed as she started scooping cupcake batter into the tins.

"No," she said. "Not of my mother. My earliest memories are of my father. Being in his arms as he danced me and my older sister Tandy around the room. Hearing him laugh." ….

###################

Her first memories of her childhood always had her father in the background. He was tall, and imposing, and by nature he had a loud voice. Commanding. Booming. All her and Tandy's friends at school would run away when he came to pick them up in his big black car. People who came to the door at their house always looked at the ground when he answered, and the other little girls never said yes when Rayna or Tandy invited them over. They were not even enticed by the promise of the big swimming pool, the ponies in the stable, or the lady in the kitchen who cooked whatever a person wanted. They were scared of her father.

But Rayna wasn't scared. Because he was her daddy. She didn't know anything about business mergers or tax stuff, or any of that. She just knew him as Daddy. When she was really little he would dance in the front room with her and Tandy after dinner, his big strong hands holding one of them on each arm as the Grand Ole Opry played on the radio in the corner.

Where her mother was in those early memories? Rayna couldn't remember much about her before she was in elementary school. She could only remember being very small and laughing and laughing as Lamar spun her around and the music surrounded them. He used to laugh a lot back then, before her mother started getting dressed up real fancy and going out every night.

"Where's she going?" Rayna started asking as she got old enough to notice. Those are the first things she remembered about her mother. She would sit on the bed and watch Virginia put on makeup, then wind her long dark reddish-brown hair up on top of her head. John Conley was always on the record player on the bureau. Her mother loved John Conley's songs. Then their mother would put on a beautiful dress, kiss the girls goodbye, and go downstairs.

The door would close behind Virginia, and Lamar's face would turn to a frown.

"Why does she always leave?" Rayna would ask.

"She's going to sing," Lamar would say. And he'd go down the hall to his office for the rest of the night and leave them in the care of a nanny. No more dancing. No more laughing.

Rayna didn't understand. "Why does she have to leave? Why can't she stay here and sing with us."

Tandy would bop her on the head. "Stop asking so many questions! It makes Daddy sad."

Virginia had wanted to sing since she was a little girl living on a farm with her parents in Oklahoma. They were poor, his family was old Nashville money made in banking and politics. It was not accustomed to mix the two. His family never approved of the marriage, and when she married Lamar, she never visited her parents again. He met her when she was still in high school, by coincidence that she'd been on a missionary trip with her school group visiting New Orleans. Some of the girls had snuck out of their dormitory and gone downtown to try and get into a jazz bar. Lamar had been there on business. She dazzled him. And he was her ticket to Nashville. Literally.

Within a few years of them being married, Virginia was singing several nights a week in clubs all over town, and people were showing interest. She was thrilled. When their two daughters came along, she adored them and tried her best to be an attentive mother. Lamar thought it would quell this urge for her to be in the spotlight. It didn't. She loved them, doted on them, but she was restless. She wanted to be the next Loretta Lynn.

Lamar would ask her why on earth she wanted to be like some country half-wit from the backwoods of Kentucky with too many kids and a cheating husband.

Virginia would get mad and say. "She made it, didn't she? She escaped. And so did I."

Rayna thought for sure her mother was going to be famous one day. She was always humming around the house, and just one time they'd gotten to go to the park and watch her sing a really important song in front of a lot of people. One time was all their father would allow. After that they always had to stay home.

She could sing real pretty. And she was beautiful. And those were the two most important things. Tandy thought having lots of money must be important, but Rayna would rather sing like her mama.

She remembered hearing them fight about it one night. They were in the kitchen, her and Tandy huddled at the top of the high staircase. She must have been eight or nine years old, looking back on it. Long after her father had stopped dancing them around and laughing. The house was colder now when her mother and father were both in it.

She felt alone most of the time. Except for Tandy.

"Why can't you just let me be who I am, Lamar?" Her mother demanded. "I want more. I want to be more than just a pretty face standing next to you at cocktail parties. I didn't leave my family and come here for that."

"And you think Watty White is going to get you all that?" Lamar said harshly.

"Yes. He is."

He looked tired. "You don't need a career. We have enough money to last the rest of our lives." Why can't you just be a wife and mother like you're supposed to, Virginia? And give up these….crazy thoughts."

"Why can't I do both?"

Rayna didn't understand either. She looked at her sister. "I like it when she sings . It's pretty. I'm gonna sing like that some day."

"Shhhh!" Tandy clapped a hand over her mouth.

But Rayna still didn't understand.

She did later, though, as she grew into adulthood. After she had daughters of her own. She understood why her father was so against her career from day one, why he fought it with a vengeance up until the day that he died. Why he was so insistent that she stand by Teddy on that mayoral stage, even after the man she married had lied, cheated people, and committed adultery.

Because she was like her mother, and it hurt him. She left, just like Virginia did. Her mother had hurt his pride as a husband, and she hurt his pride as a father. She was like both of them, in more ways than she cared to admit. She had the perserverance, the stubbornness, the drive of her father. And she had the heart and voice of her mother, and the restless urge to spread her wings and pursue her own desires.

In the end Rayna had done what he'd stopped her mother from doing the day he drove her off that road. She got her career, she got her family. She got both. She had it all. She proved to her father it wasn't impossible after all.

And it was the one thing on this earth even Lamar Wyatt and his money couldn't do a damn thing to put a stop to.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey there," Deacon said, as their writer friend came in with her own coffee as usual and a box of donuts. "Rayna isn't here, she must have forgotten to tell you. She had to volunteer at Maddie's school this morning, so she'll be back in a few hours."

"Oh, no problem," Lucy said cheerfully, setting the donuts on the counter. "I'll just follow you around then til she gets back."

He looked a little disturbed by this fact, having done his part pretty well the last few times Lucy had appeared to make himself scarce. That fact had not been lost on Rayna one bit.

_I bet Ray did this on purpose. _

"Uh….okay." 

"You tell me about where you came from," she said without a moment's pause, watching him fix up his coffee the way he liked it. "You must have had a childhood somewhere here or there."

He shrugged his shoulders and leaned against the counter. "Oh, you know, I just kind of…dropped out of the sky one day with a guitar strapped to my back. Landed right in the middle of lower Broad."

"Like hell you did," Lucy grumbled. "Boy, getting anything out of the two of you is like trying to squeeze water out of a rock."

He laughed. "Well no offense," he said. "But this is Rayna's business, all this writing stuff. What does where I come from got to do with any of it?"

"Nothing," she said without hesitation. "Right now I'm just being a nosy old lady. How did you end up here? In Nashville."

He shrugged. "Same way everyone did I guess. I followed the music."…

#######################################

The first time he came to Nashville, he was 10 years old.

He remembered the day because his mother came home from work in the middle of the afternoon while the sun was still shining. She never did that.

For a moment he was scared to death she got fired. What would they do then, when his father got done drinking up all his weekly paycheck and there was no more money? He was old enough to know what no money meant. No money, no rent, no food.

Her eyes looked kind of funny, like all shiny and misty.

"Come on," she said to him and his sister. "Get in the car. We're going away for a few days."

So they simply got in the beat up old car and drove away. The laundry was still on the line and his dog was barking in the front yard. He wondered if she'd just gone cotton-pickin crazy or something.

She worked as a waitress all day. He always got stuck with his sister, who was two years old and was supposed to "watch" him. He didn't think he needed to be "watched", so he'd wander around on his bike, looking for neighbors who wanted a lawn mowed or weeds pulled, and be lucky if he got a sandwich or a dollar to hide away. Beverly would be always looking for him, yanking him home by the ear to help her finish the chores before their mother got home. Their mother was too tired to do anything by the time she got home except make dinner and go to bed, so they had to do the rest.

She always looked tired. He hated that that was the thing he remembered most about her. She looked always as if life had defeated her.

His father worked in the tire factory and rarely was home before dark.

That was fine with them. He had a bad temper and a taste for the bottle. And if things weren't exactly the way he wanted them, he showed it. With his fists or his belt.

"Where we going?" Deacon asked from the backseat. "We shoulda brought Max. He'll be lonely."

His mama looked almost happy. He had never seen her look like that.

"You never mind that old dirty dog," she said. "He'll be fine. It's just for a few days. Bev, baby, look in my purse there and see what you find."

In the front seat, his sister unzipped the leather satchel, and pulled out an envelope. In it was the most money he had ever seen in his entire life.

A regular customer had left her a 500.00 tip that day. Caroline had thought it was a joke, but no sir, the manager said that money was rightfully hers and she better not let that jackass of a husband she had know it existed. Buy her kids what they need, and take them somewhere nice.

She'd always wanted to get out of the small town they lived in and see the big city.

It was probably the only impulsive thing Caroline Claybourne had ever done in her life, and there would be consequences later.

But Deacon would never forget the look on her face that day.

It sure as hell beat the one on the day when he was 16 as she laid in that coffin.

They drove into town when the sun was just going down. His mother got a room at a cheap motel and then then three of them just wandered. He'd never been to a big city before. Too many people all pushing and shoving for his liking, but he didn't even mind that all too much, because the music was what hooked him. It seemed like you could hear or see someone playing on every corner.

"They're all trying to make it big," his mama said. "That's why people come here."

He wondered why she'd wanted to come. She wasn't a singer or anything. She was just a waitress.

But he thought she kinda looked like she wanted to stay forever.

The last day, they went to a big park. It was like a big green circle dropped in the middle of the city, with buildings all around it. It felt to him like they were at the center of the world.

His mother said it was the Fourth of July. He didn't even know it was July already. The days seemed so long, that sometimes he couldn't remember where one ended and another started. The park was crammed with people all dressed up in red, white, and blue, and there was a big stage thing set up right smack dab in the middle.

He wondered who was gonna play. Maybe it would be some famous person, like all those guys who played on the radio on saturday nights at the Opry. He liked listening to them play their guitars.

He was disappointed when a bunch of codgey-looking men in suits came onstage instead. Behind them this beautiful lady came out in a long dress that looked like an American flag and sang the national anthem. Beverly dragged them through the crowd and right up to the front to watch the lady sing.

"Wow, she's amazing," his sister said. "I'm gonna do that some day."

"You aint never gonna do that," he scoffed. "The only singing you're gonna do is when mama drags us to church on Sundays."

"Sure I am." Beverly said. "I'll sing it even better than her too."

There was a little kid in front of him, a girl in a poofy- looking dress watching the fancy lady sing. She was about half as big as him, but didn't seem a lick bothered by that fact. She spun around and put her hands on her hips.

"You shouldn't ever tell someone they can't do something," she spouted. "And that's my mama singin that song. Nobody's ever gonna sing better than her."

"Aw, you're just a girl," he muttered. "Girls can't do nothing."

That little thing, she actually kicked him in the shin with her pointy white shoe.

"Ow!" He yelled. "What'd you do that for?"

Caroline called out then, and Beverly dragged him away from the stage, but when he looked back that little kid was still there with her sister. Watching their mama sing with the biggest smile on her face he'd ever seen, already forgotten about him.

Those four days in Nashville stayed with him for a long time. He had the itch after that. It never left him. He'd lay in bed and night and close his eyes when his parents were arguing and let his mind drift off to standing outside on those sidewalks, the music floating out, imagining the sound of those guitars carrying him away.

The next time he went back he was 17. Got on a bus with a guitar in his hand, a duffel bag on his shoulder, and 200 bucks in his pocket and never looked back. He didn't have anything to look back for.

##########################################

Now, Lucy- also known as the great Roger Marten- was sitting there laughing at him in great big guffaws. "Do I have to ask if that little girl had red hair?"

"Well come on now, you know she did."

"If that ain't the damnest thing I've ever heard. She really kicked you in the shins?"

Deacon grinned. "Boy, she was a sassy thing, even back then. Some things never change."

"Go figure, the things you remember. The world ain't as big as people think it is," Lucy remarked.

He shook his head. "You know, all those years and Ray and I never figured out until probably six months ago that we'd met when we were kids. Gotta mean something, don't it?"

"Sure it does," Lucy said with the wizened look of someone who had been around far more years. "It means you did something right. And the universe likes you."

Deacon looked over as Rayna breezed through the kitchen door just then, calling her apologies for being late as she dropped her purse on the counter and went for a bottle of water, grumbling on about trying to help uninterested teenagers. Her face was flushed and her hair was rumpled and he kind of hoped this old lady was about to leave so he could show her how glad he was to see her properly.

"Yeah," he said with a smile. "I sure as hell must be doing something right."


	3. Chapter 3

Daphne's 11th birthday was coming up in just a week. She was beyond excited as she relayed all the plans for the big slumber party to Lucy on the way to her ballet class. Lucy listened attentively, the way she always did, asking just the right questions.

"Come on now," Rayna said with an affectionate smile as she parked the truck. "You better scoot, or you'll be late. I have to run a few errands and we'll be back."

They both watched her hop out of the backseat and dash into the building between the raindrops.

"You have wonderful daughters, Rayna," Lucy said, her eyes looking a little teary.

"Yes I do," she agreed.

"Such a special age, to be young like that. I'm not so old that I don't remember it."

Rayna stared out the windshield as the raindrops fell harder.

She wasn't so old that she didn't remember it either. For her 11th birthday her mother had given her a present that held more significance than any she'd ever received before or after: an old guitar in a beat up black box. She never did quite learn to play it very well, but it wasn't the playing that was important. That guitar was what gave her the courage to sing. 17 months later, her mother was gone. It had been raining the night she died….

###########################################

"Are you singing tonight, mama?" Rayna asked as she wandered into the bedroom and sat on the window seat. Through the window pane she could see thunder and lightning cracked the sky, and she shivered.

Virginia gave her a lovely smile as she stood up from the vanity. "Yes, baby. Don't worry about the rain. I'll be fine."

"I wish I could come and watch you sing," she begged. "please? Just for a little while?"

It had been years since Lamar had allowed that.

"When you're older," Virginia promised. "Go off to bed now, I'll see you soon."

Rayna never really thought about the context of that conversation until later years. Virginia hadn't said "I'll see you in the morning". She said I'll see you soon."

It was a soon that never came. And she never did get to see her mother perform again.

The next morning there were uniformed men in the house. Her father was called to come home from his business trip in Louisville, and no one would tell her and Tandy anything. She was mad. And where was her mother anyway? She never stayed away more than a few hours, and was always there the next morning at breakfast.

"Something's wrong," she kept insisting to her sister as they hid in Tandy's room. "Just let me go out there and listen."

But Tandy refused to let her past the door.

It was hours before anyone came to check on them. Like they'd just been forgotten.

And then Lamar was there, his presence huge and looming in the door of Tandy's pink and white bedroom. His mouth in a straight line, and his dark eyes flashing.

His voice never cracked, though. Not once. "I'm sorry to tell you that your mother isn't with us anymore," he said. "There was an accident last night. She's dead."

She sat there on the bed and felt Tandy grab her hand. Neither of them spoke. She wanted to scream and cry. _Bring her back_! But nobody cried in front of Lamar.

He just turned and walked out.

That's what she would remember the most about that night. He was so unfeeling, and in an instant they were two teenage girls left motherless.

She felt the tears roll down her face and looked over at her sister. "I wanted to hear her sing."

Tandy's face was like a stone. It scared her. Because it looked a lot like the face of their father.

"Can you go, please?" Tandy said quietly. "To your own room? I want to be alone."

Rayna didn't want to be alone. She wanted to scream and cry. She wanted someone to hug her and tell her that it was all a mistake and her mother would be home tomorrow.

But in this family, you didn't do that. You shoved it away and hoped it never came back to the surface. You sucked it up and did what had to be done. You put on a good show for people watching, and never, ever let them see you feel anything. That was the lesson her father taught her at 12 years old.

#####################################

"He was such a cold man, even before she died," Lucy said now. "Perhaps It was hard for your mother to live with him."

"Maybe. But she was going to leave us anyway," Rayna said, unable to hide the sadness in her voice. "Not just my father, but Tandy and I too. You know she was having an affair with Watty. For years and years."

"I did know. Many people did."

"I asked him once," she admitted. "Watty. I asked him what he would have done if she made it to his house with all her bags packed. He said he would have sent her home to me and Tandy where she belonged. But that she probably wouldn't have stayed. That she was like trying to hold the wind. You just can't."

"Do you think you ever really forgave her for that?"

Little girls needed their mothers. Especially at that age. Images of the accident from two years ago came to mind, and she pushed them away. It still terrified to think she'd almost done that to her own daughters.

"Do I get to ask you any questions?" Rayna said abruptly. "What's the pay-off in this anyway?"

Lucy's face slid into a wizened old smile. "One a day. That's it."

"Sounds like a deal I can live with," she said calmly. "How the hell old are you anyway?"

Lucy laughed and laughed. "Old enough to know better and too young to care, my dear. And that's all you need to know. Now if anyone asks about Roger Marten, well you just tell them he's about 45, with pretty blue eyes and dark hair, and looks like that fellow in all the movies…."


	4. Chapter 4

"I still don't know what I think about this," Rayna murmured to her sister as they took their spots in the front row at the Bluebird. "She's only 15."

"Oh come on now," Tandy patted her hand. "She's amazing, you know that."

"I do know that," Rayna grumbled. "And everyone else is going to know it too."

"You can't hold back the wind," Watty said with a knowing smile from his spot across the table.

Maddie was playing two songs with Deacon tonight. It was her first time performing here.

Rayna knew as soon as the first verse came out of their little girl's mouth, as soon as this town got a notion of how amazing she was, it was going to be impossible to hold Maddie back.

Maddie had a gift. Both her girls did. But Maddie's was different. She had half the genes of a world class guitar player and half the genes of a country superstar singer. She could write, play, AND sing. That was a pure lethal combination.

Watty had come to hear Rayna's little girl sing. And Lucy as well. For once the Yankees cap was nowhere in sight. Teddy was here too, at a safe distance in the back row, some new woman on his arm. She looked nice. He looked happy, and she was glad. Glad they'd both finally found the happiness they deserved.

Rayna watched as Watty and Lucy hugged each other and said hello like old friends.

"I get to ask my question first today," Rayna said. "How in the world do you two know each other?"

"My darling, Miss Lucy and I have known each other since before you were a glint in Lamar and Virginia's eye."

Lucy laughed. "Oh you know, back when Watty was playing with his band, he was a struggling musician, and I was a struggling reporter for the Tennessean. We ran in the same circles, helped each other out once in awhile. That's how I came across your mother as well." Lucy's eyes twinkled. "And Watty, I remember you talking all about Virginia's little girl."

Watty nodded in agreement. "It is indeed a small world. I remember the first time I heard her sing," he recalled, turning to Rayna. "I went to the house to see Virginia, and you were in the front room, all the dolls lined up, giving them a concert. You were belting out "Amazing Grace" so loud I swear they could hear it in Memphis."

Rayna couldn't hold back a smile. "You never told me that before."

"I knew," he confirmed, "that some day I was going to see you on a stage, Rayna. And I was right. " He excused himself to go speak with some record execs that had just walked in.

Rayna was taken back through time. Watty had always been there for her, and she owed him everything….

###########################################

She ran away from home only once in her lifetime, although she thought about it just about every single day from the age of 12 on up.

It was the year she was fourteen. A fourteen year old girl in the middle of teenage hell. Her mother was dead. The girls at school didn't like her because she liked country music. And probably because she could sing better than any of them. Tandy was sixteen and too busy dying her hair, smoking cigarettes behind the gymnasium and trying to get attention by getting into trouble to pay any mind to her little sister. For Rayna, music was the only thing that saved her.

"Please," she begged and pleaded with her father. "Please let me try out for the school musical. It's _Peter Pan_, and the songs are so amazing. They already even asked me to do it. I almost don't have to try out and it's my part. The director asked me herself."

She'd taken two busses here, to his downtown office to ask him.

"This is not up for discussion," Lamar said, not even looking up from his desk and the legal contracts he was reading. "No daughter of mine is going to embarrass me singing childish theatre songs on a stage. I told you the church choir would be acceptable, and that is it."

"But Daddy," she protested. She didn't want to sing in the gol damnation church choir. Singing about God and Jesus and all that, sure it was pretty. And she believed in all that stuff. But it sure wasn't what she wanted to sing about.

"I said no, Rayna."

She tried again, and again she was shut down.

"Fine," she said, her frustration bubbling over. "Maybe I'll just run away from home. Nobody cares about me anyway. If you want me to sing to Jesus, I'd rather be dead like mama. I bet you can sing anything you want in heaven, even country songs."

Lamar stopped reading. He raised his eyebrows and looked at her over his glasses. And didn't say a word.

She lifted her stubborn chin and turned to walk out of her father's office without shedding one tear.

Rayna didn't get on the two busses to go back home. She wandered around the city for so long, the sun went down. She sat outside Tootsie's and listened to the music. It made her heart ache, and it made her miss her mama real bad, all those nights she'd laid on the big four-poster bed listening to Virginia sing along to the record player, singing along with her.

She wandered farther out from the center of the city, onto the side streets and store fronts she rarely visited. It was really dark now, and she was a little bit scared at she sat on the bench in the park and pulled a tattered brown journal out of her shoulder bag and started writing.

It had been her mother's. When they'd taken all of Virginia's things out of the drawers and closets, Rayna had found it on top of the stack. Just carelessly thrown there, ready to go away with the other things to charity.

Sometimes it made her feel better to read it. Sometimes it made her feel worse when she read the things she didn't understand. It was only half full, only half the pages written on.

So now, it was hers. She wrote her own feelings in back next to her mama's. She tried to write songs sometimes, or what she thought songs would sound like.

She didn't know where to go or what to do, but she was scared. And alone.

So she went to a payphone and dialed the one person who she knew would understand.

Uncle Watty.

His new wife Anna answered the phone, and worriedly passed it on to him.

"It's Rayna," she said in a small voice. "Can you come and pick me up?"

He was there in a half hour.

Watty took her home to Belle Meade. He had to. She was fourteen. She had a long ways and a lot of growing up to do before she could be on her own.

"Listen," he said to Rayna as they sat in the driveway of the massive Belle Meade mansion. There were police cars, officers already descending on them. "Don't do this again, okay? It's not safe."

The poor girl looked so heartbroken, so lost.

"I'll help you," he said, against his better judgement. Lamar Wyatt would have his head on a platter if he found out. "If you need something, you come to me and Anna. I'll help you find a way to sing. But don't run away. It never gets you anywhere."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

With a defeated sigh she climbed out of his car. "Thanks, Uncle Watty."

"Be a good girl, my little songbird. We'll figure it out."

##################################################

"You didn't do that play, did you?" Lucy asked.

Rayna shook her head slowly. "No. The look on my father's face when I walked in the door that night….he wasn't even worried. He said "I knew you'd be back."

"He thought he broke you." Lucy murmured. "He thought he got his way and he broke you."

She nodded. "But Watty did help me. I used to have this friend named "Susie Stewart" when I was younger. As far as Lamar knew I was always over at Susie's house studying, or riding Susie's horses, or working on a community service project with Susie. Boy, Susie and I were real close those first two years of high school," she shook her head and laughed at the memory. "Watty or Anna used to pick me up from our meeting spot in Lutz park, and take me to the studio, or to a voice lesson, or to make demos. I don't know how long we thought that would work, but it did. For awhile."

"How did he catch you?"

"When I was sixteen, my father ran into Susie's mother downtown. I believe he said her exact words were "oh, how is Rayna? We haven't seen her in years. We're just in town visiting family." Rayna winced. "I remember that day very well. Because that was the first night I played at the Bluebird. And the first night I met Deacon. And the night Lamar kicked me out of the house."

In front of them, Deacon took the stage with his guitar, and Maddie came out behind him with her own guitar, nodding shyly to the crowd. They all clapped and cheered. Rayna got a lump in her throat.

Lucy nodded wisely. "You never forget the nights that change your life forever."

Rayna looked at the stage as her daughter's beautiful voice floated out towards them. "No," she said. "You certainly don't."


	5. Chapter 5

Another Wednesday. Another day with Lucy in tow.

Rayna could hardly admit it but she was starting to enjoy the older woman's company. It was especially nice on a week like this when the girls were with Teddy. She always missed them something awful when they were gone, even though the time alone with Deacon was nice too. They usually spent most of those off weeks at his place. Where he reveled in the fact that he wasn't limited to sleeping on the couch.

"What kind of fabulous adventures are you taking me on today, my dear?" Lucy asked cheerfully, meeting her at the front door of Deacon's house on Wednesday morning.

Rayna laughed as she led her inside. "Fabulous adventures, huh? Well I don't know about _that._ My girls are with Teddy this week. So I need to try and get as much work done as possible. I'm headed to sound check for a planning meeting with Juliette and the new band opening for her tour. Nothing too spectacular. I'm sure with all the people you've written about, there's other lives that are a lot more exciting than ours."

"Oh, I don't know," Lucy surmised. "I've done my share of traveling around. Hell, I followed Will Sharpton around for near a year. He even got me to like whiskey. But sometimes watching a family come together is just as fun."

Deacon walked out of the kitchen then. He raised his coffee cup in salute. Lucy raised her thermos.

"I'll just be a second," Rayna said. "I have a stack of demos upstairs I need to grab, and then we'll be on our way."

Lucy was already taking inventory of his house.

"Dead animals and guitars," she said. "This is a bonafide man-hut."

"That it is," he said with a smile. "Can't lie. Lived by myself here for a long time, except for my niece on and off. Still getting used to the curling irons and makeup sneaking their way into my bathroom."

"What are the two of you planning on doing after you're married?"

"We haven't decided yet," he admitted. "I want them to move in here, Rayna doesn't want to uproot the girls again. Talked about selling both and buying something of our own. But this one…this is special though. Ray and I lived in this house together. In the beginning."

Lucy patted his arm. "Those girls will be just fine, don't you worry. They will be happy wherever the two of you are happy. Tell me about these guitars hanging on the wall over here. Must be important. Look pretty special."

He laughed softly. "I guess you could say that. That's my first guitar. That empty spot, that's for Rayna's first one. It's still Maddie's favorite, so she snags it to play a lot."

Lucy examined the beat up wooden guitar closely. "Looks pretty old."

He smiled. "Yeah, it was already old 35 years ago, so you can imagine."

"Who gave it to you?"

"Nobody," he said. "Got it myself."

"Well, who taught you to play?"

"There were these older kids down the street," he recalled. "Who had a band. Think they musta felt sorry for me. They let me hang around and watch them practice, and taught me to play."

He stared at the beloved guitar on the wall, taken back to all those years ago when he was that struggling kid in Mississippi. Just trying to figure out where he belonged…..

############################

Deacon got his first guitar out of the trash when he was was twelve years old. He could hardly believe his luck. It was just sitting there on someone's pile of junk, all broken strings and dusty and waiting for garbage day.

Without a second thought, he picked it up and carried it home. He shined it up and went around collecting cans and bottles to get money to buy strings, even know he didn't know anything about guitars or how to string them.

But Jimmy Porter, that kid down the street around the corner, he did. Jimmy was 16 and could drive, and when you went down the block and to that side of the railroad tracks, you were in the "good" part of town. Jimmy lived in a fancy house and drove a shiny black car, and didn't seem to give a damn which part of town he lived in, he just wanted to play music. Him and his friends would rehearse til the wee hours of the morning, pissing off all the neighbors, and not caring one bit.

More than once Deacon had snuck out of his house when his dad was passed out in the chair, and sat outside in the bushes behind Jimmy's garage in the dark, listening to them play.

Now, he sucked up his courage and went over there. The garage was open today and they were practicing like always, him and three other guys banging out an amped up version of a Hank Williams song.

"Hey kid," Jimmy stopped playing and put down his guitar. "What you got there?"

"I need some guitar strings," he said. "Where do I get em?"

Jimmy kind of looked at him funny. "This is a Martin D-28. Prolly worth a mint even banged up. Where the hell did you get this guitar?"

"Don't matter," he said stiffly. 'I found it and it's mine. I need to get some strings so I can play it."

"You know how to play?"

He didn't answer him.

"Tell you what," Jimmy said as he lit up a cigarette.

Deacon couldn't believe that Jimmy got to do that. He was just standing outside in front of that fancy house smoking cigarettes like it was nobody's business. He wanted to be like that. Just do whatever you want and not give a damn and nobody could stop you.

"I'll put some strings on it for ya. I got lots of extras laying around. Come back tomorrow. Same time."

Deacon didn't want to leave it. He was afraid he'd never see it again.

But Jimmy kept his promise. He did a hell of a lot more than that. He taught him to play, and he taught him to put words to music.

And in the end, that was what got him out.

###################################

"Sounds like a real nice kid," Lucy commented. "You know what ever happened to him?"

"Yeah," Deacon said slowly. "He died. He joined the Air Force after he graduated high school and I never saw him again. Guess that was his way out. Got killed in a training accident when I was about 15 or so."

"Oh what a shame. A Real shame."

"It sure is," he said. "I woulda been nothing I am today without that kid around."

"Funny isn't it," Lucy said quietly. "How random people shape your life in little ways that have such a huge impact."

"You're a pretty smart old lady."

"I've been around for a long time, Mr. Claybourne," she said. "I notice things."

"You might as well be calling me Deacon by now," he said. "You know enough about all of us, that I would guess you're gonna be called family by the time this book is done. And this family is hard to get out of."

"What about you?" Lucy asked. "Your family? What ever happened to that mom and sister you mentioned a few weeks back."

He got sort of a funny look on his face. "Let's save that one for another day, huh?"

Rayna came back downstairs then, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "See you later, Babe. Lucy and I are going to Soundcheck. Get some writing done, huh? Enjoy the peace and quiet."

He watched them go and sat down with his guitar on the back porch. And started thinking.

Thinking about the parts of the story he'd been reluctant to let Lucy in on…..

##########################################

His mother died when he was 16. She didn't have cancer. She didn't have a heart attack.

She had a broken neck, two black eyes, and a ruptured spleen.

He'd tried to stop him, but it hadn't done much good.

By the time the cops and paramedics showed up, it was too late to help her. He had a cut on his forehead, and his ears were still ringing a little from getting his head slammed against the floor earlier. They wanted to look him over, but he waved em away.

Instead he stood on the front porch and watched as uniformed officers hauled his father off to prison. Beverly sat nearby on the top porch steps crying as officers tried to ask her questions about what happened.

He didn't care what the happened to the bastard as long as they hauled him away. He was more concerned with the "what the hell were they going to do now?" part of the equation.

Beverly was 18, so after that she was stuck with keeping him in line and trying to keep a roof over both of their heads.

He tried to help her out and do his part. They both did. His sister dropped out of the community college she'd been enrolled in on scholarship, and took 2 jobs, working as a nurse's aid all day and working half the night as a grocery store stocker. The rent got paid. They got to eat. The lights stayed on. But barely. There wasn't extra money for much else. He wanted to drop out and get a better job than the job fixing cars and pumping gas that he had, but there wasn't much in this town for anyone, let alone a 16 yr old kid.

Beverly insisted he wasn't doing nothing til he finished high school, and they argued about it constantly. It went on this way for a year after his mother died and they gave his father 50 years in the state penitentiary.

Then his sister started dating Doug. It wasn't long before Beverly wanted to give up on renting the house and move in with Doug.

No way in hell, he told him, was he living with another jackass that reminded him a little too much of his daddy.

"He has a house and a good job. He'll take care of us, Deacon," Beverly reasoned with him.

"Yeah, I bet Ma thought that too, the day she met _him_," Deacon said, unable to hold back the bitterness. "And where the hell is she now? In the ground, that's where." In the ground, with two black and blue handprints around her lifeless neck. She'd worked her ass off her entire life, and that was how she'd spent eternity.

"Why you wanna stay here anyway?" Beverly cried out, standing in the doorway of his room. "It's nothing but bad memories, Deacon. He killed her on the other side of the wall where you sleep at night."

"You're right," he said, continuing stuffing clothes in his duffel bag. "I don't want to stay here. This house or this town. I'm leavin. You can come with me if you want, but I'm getting on that bus this afternoon come hell or high water."

"You know I can't do that. "

"Why the hell not?"

"Don't curse! Mama hated cursing."

He closed his eyes against the pounding in his temples that never seemed to go away lately.

She calmed a little. "Doug wants to get married."

"You're going to be just like her, you know," he said quietly. "Stuck here. Dead end job. With a jackass who don't give a damn about you. I'm gonna be better than that. Better than them."

"It's not going to be that way. It'll be different. Stay here at least until you finish school. Mama would want that."

He didn't bother to try and explain it to her. How he'd been "finished" with that crap a long time ago. Sitting in classes listening to teachers drone on about useless information while his mind was elsewhere, looking out the window at the river nearby, wishing he was playing the tune that he couldn't get out of his head. He did okay in English classes because he could write and he didn't mind a good book. Everything else he didn't bother to pretend like he cared.

Deacon zipped up the bag, and brushed past her and walked out the door. Searching for something. He didn't know what, but he sure as hell wasn't going to find it hanging around here.

Three hours later he was on a bus bound for Nashville, Tennessee.

The first couple years were hard. Once he finally hit 18, he picked up bartending jobs all over town. The tips would get raked in like candy when they'd get him to put down the bottles he was serving to get up onstage to play. It took weeks before he could scrape enough money for cheap motels rather than sleeping in the crappy truck he got in exchange for work, and more than a year before he got a half-ass apartment. He worked. He played. He wrote. He tried to remember to feed himself. Played open mic nights wherever he could find them. Played on street corners for whoever would listen. Made friends and slept on a lot of couches. Even played solos at a damn wedding or two. People finally started to take notice, asked him once in awhile to sit in on their bands. Met Vince one night when he was doing a gig, and they hit it off right away. Decided to form a band. He hated the idea of singing in front of people, but it worked. If that's what it took to get his songs heard, he'd get used to it until someone else wanted them.

It was hard, but he had to accept that it wasn't different than any other artist in this town, playing for free when you had to just to get heard, or living off tips in coffee cans. They were all just trying to make it.

His big break, though, was getting the bartending job at the Bluebird. In more ways than one. He could work, he could listen, and he could play. He listened to the best of the best, absorbed every moment of it, tried to learn from it, tried to make it blend with everything Jimmy Porter had taught him years ago. He wanted to _be_ the best.

And then one night Watty White walked in and the rest was history. He had this kid with him, barely more than a girl. The white leather boots on her feet were expensive but the guitar case she was dragging around was old. She had hair the color of fire and flashing blue eyes. She didn't look to him any different than any of the others: little tone-deaf rich girls who wanted to pretend they could sing and play just to piss off their fathers, or were slumming to get attention from the poor-ass musicians.

But something about this one got to him. And they never got to him. Ever.

People started talking right away. Four or five of the big "Music Row" execs were there that night. Was she gonna play? It was harder than hell to get a spot on the open list on a night like tonight and she just walked right in and got one.

Then he figured it out . The red-head was Lamar Wyatt's daughter. Well no wonder she got a spot. Her daddy owned half this town. Literally. _Must be nice,_ he thought.

He might have wanted a spot too, but Ginger promised him if there was time left at the end she'd do her damnest to get him in. Half the time, they were calling him up there to play requests anyway.

"I need a favor," Watty cornered him as he was restocking liquor bottles in the back.

He sighed, knowing what the man was going to ask immediately.

"She's got nerves like steel and a voice like an angel. But playing guitar? She's awful. Help a man out here, Deacon."

"Can't she go buy a guitar player somewhere else?"

"There's a lot of important people out there, kid. Could hear you play too."

In the end he gave in. And he never regretted it. For more reasons than one.

########################################

As he sat there now on the back porch picking his guitar, he thought about what Lucy had said. How your life could change in an instant and you didn't realize the impact of that moment, that minute until years after it had passed. How someone could walk into your life and stay there forever. Rayna had plowed into his life like a freight train that night at the Bluebird and stayed there. He'd never imagined all the things they would face, good and bad, how much they could hurt each other. How much they would love each other. How happy she could make him just by smiling when he kissed her.

He laughed softly, and words came together in his mind to match the tune that he had been playing with for days now_. _It was a special one. He was thinking he'd save it for their wedding…..


	6. Chapter 6

"Mom!" Maddie protested. "This is soooooo unfair!"

Lucy had walked into the middle of a Wednesday afternoon warzone. Rayna and Maddie were facing off in the kitchen, Maddie with her hip cocked and her arms across her chest.

"I don't care if you think it's fair," Rayna said firmly. "I'm the mama and what I say goes."

"Deacon won't agree with you," she said, trying to use her dad as a bargaining chip. "Because he's _cool."_

Rayna laughed. "Are you kidding? He'll probably tell you that you have to wait until you're 35. And Teddy would agree with him for once. Now go on upstairs and finish your homework before dinner. End of discussion."

"This is _so _lame." Maddie glared at her mother and stomped her way up the stairs.

"Whew!" Lucy chuckled. "Those teenage hormones. What is she belly-aching about?"

Rayna rolled her eyes. "She wants to go to a movie this weekend. Alone. With a boy."

"Oh my. They start younger and younger these days, don't they?"

"Well we've told her only group dating until she's out of high school, and she doesn't like that too much." She sighed. "Am I being unreasonable? I mean really."

"Kids grow up fast these days."

"They do," she said, feeling a little sad. "My babies are going to grow up and leave me."

"Being raised by the two of you, you don't have to worry much. They'll make good choices."

"I sure hope so," Rayna said. "I mean, I was sixteen when I met Deacon. We didn't date right away but he was four years older than me and it felt like a million years back then."

"He told me," Lucy said with a smile. "Some of it. That he met you at the Bluebird."

"Yep," Rayna said with a sigh. "And the rest, as they say, is history….I think I fell in love with him in the first ten minutes. It just took me awhile to figure it out. "

That night at the Bluebird changed her life. In more ways than one….

#####################################

Rayna would never admit to save her life that she was scared to death to go out there and sing in front of all those important people. She kept scanning the crowd, hoping none of her father's businessmen cronies had decided to stop in for a drink on tonight of all nights.

"You'll be fine," the guy next to her said, impatiently tuning his guitar as they waited to go on. That guitar player guy Watty had rustled up for her. Deacon, he said his name was. Deacon something-or-another. _What the hell kind of a name is Deacon?_ she wondered.

He'd be cute, she thought, if it weren't for that grumpy look on his face. Too old for her. Not that it mattered. She was probably going to be 60 years old before her father let her date anyone.

They called her name. Rayna Jaymes. She was Rayna James now. Hell with the Wyatt part. She was gonna make her own way.

"Oh man," she muttered as they walked to the middle of the stage. "I don't think I can do this."

"You can," he said as he sat down on the stool next to her. She was turning pale in a hurry, seeing all those suits sitting in the front row. "Stop looking at them ugly suckers," he murmured. "Just look at me."

So she did. She hit her cue right on like Watty had taught her. And she sang, with him singing backup as he played. Her eyes never left his face. It was the only thing that got her through that. She felt kind of funny, weird, all like something was happening that she didn't quite understand. But he just kept right on holding her gaze while they sang.

When they were done they got a standing ovation. Walked off the small stage, and she was so excited, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.

"Whoa there," he said with a low laugh, taking a step back.

Her face flushed, embarrassed. "Sorry."

"No big deal," he said easily. "Nice job. I'm going back to work now, though. Good luck."

"Yeah," she said softly, watching him set down his guitar and walk back behind the bar to go back to serving drinks. "Thanks."

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to the phone lying sideways on the back counter. "You have a phone call."

She picked it up uneasily. Nobody was supposed to know where she was. Lamar thought she was having a sleepover at good old Susie Stewart's house. Too bad he didn't know Susie had moved to Georgia in second grade.

Lamar's voice came at her like a foghorn. "I want you in this house in 30 minutes. Or don't bother to come back. The locks will be changed by morning."

She knew if she did as he asked, if she bowed down to his commands once more, this would be all over. Tonight could be her chance. And if she went home, he'd find a way to take it all.

"I'm not coming back," she said quietly. "Go ahead and change those locks, Daddy. From now on I'm making my own way."

He laughed harshly. "We'll see about that. See you in 30 minutes."

"No," she said. "You won't." Slowly, deliberately she hung up the phone.

She didn't know at the time it was the last conversation she'd have with her father for four years.

She turned back and Deacon the guitar player turned bartender extraordinaire was watching her intently.

"What was that all about?"

She lifted her chin. "None of your damn business, thank you." And turned and walked away.

She stuck around as long as she could, until they closed down at 2 am. And then went outside and started walking, dragging that damn guitar case with her that felt like it had rocks in it.

_Well if this ain't the stupidest idea I ever had,_ she thought. She should have told Watty she couldn't go home, but her pride had stopped her. Tandy's place was clear across town, but she didn't want to go there much either.

She only got about two blocks before a rusty rattle-trap truck screeched to a stop next to her.

"What the hell are you doing?" He demanded. "Trying to get killed or just mugged?"

Deacon. The grumpy guitar picker. What the hell did he say his last name was? She couldn't remember to save her own life. "Oh, just taking a walk," she said with false cheerfulness, walking faster. "See ya around."

He threw the truck into park. "Get in."

"I don't want to!"

"Well dammit, do it anyway!"

Cursing all the way, she yanked on the doorhandle. It took three tries before it finally opened and she got in his truck.

"You might as well leave that guitar on the curb," he commented. "You're never gonna be good at it."

She gritted her teeth. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. And I am not leaving it anywhere. It was my mothers." Watty had told her the same thing, that she wasn't a natural guitar player. Her hands were too small, and her fingers were too clumsy. He didn't say it to be cruel, but she knew he was right. It wasn't her gift. Hers was in her voice.

He swung the truck around back in the other direction, and she knew right where he was going. To her father's. Everyone knew which one was Lamar's mansion, because it was one of the biggest estates in the ritzy part of town, lit up like the fourth of july every night. Tour buses stopped sometimes to take pictures.

"I'm not going to Belle Meade," she said hesitantly.

He glanced over at her. "What? Where am I taking you then? To a friend's?"

Ha! She didn't have any of those.

With a sigh, Deacon pulled over to the side of the road once more. "What the hell is going on here? Are we driving in circles all night or what?"

"I don't know where to go," she said softly. "My father kicked me out. I don't know how he found out I was singing tonight but….I can't go home now. Or I'll never get to do it again."

He cursed that insufferable man none too quietly and glanced at the clock. 2:34 am. Pulled back out onto the highway.

"Um…." She asked hesitantly. "Where are we going?"

"Home," he replied. "I'm tired. We'll deal with you in the morning."

It turned out "home" was a two bedroom apartment he rented with a guy named Vince and his girlfriend.

She knew this because when they walked in, the guy was laying on the couch with a beer in his hand and a girl next to him asleep while he watched porno on tv.

"Wow, she's a little young," the guy commented. "Even for you, Deac."

"Shut up, Vince," he muttered. "She's just staying here for tonight. Get your ass in your own room. I get the couch."

Rayna tried real hard not to look at the tv as they walked past it to go down the hall.

"Um…I can sleep on the couch, you know," she said tentatively. "You don't have to give up your room."

"It's no big deal," he said as he showed her where the bathroom was, and then flipped the light on in his room.

It was cleaner than she thought it would be. Just clothes in a pile on the floor and about 5 different guitars. The walls was what got to her.

There was writing on the walls.

Without even thinking she walked over and traced her hand over the words that said _your goodbye gets me every time. _

He wrote songs on his walls. Who the hell did that? My god.

She looked over at him in amazement.

"Sometimes I run out of paper," he muttered. "Grab a tshirt if you need one. They're clean." And just walked out of the room and left her standing there.

She went to sleep in a t-shirt with Johnny Cash on the front, with her head on an unfamiliar pillow that smelled like cologne and cigarettes. And her last thought _was Claybourne. His last name is Claybourne_. _What the hell kind of a name is that?_

When she woke in the morning, she heard him on the phone in the other room.

"Yeah, she's fine," he said. "No, she can stay here with me. It's fine. …Well if you insist."

A pause.

"Jeez, Watty, she's 16! You know me better than that. I slept on the damn couch."

She stifled a giggle.

Watty was there in a half hour to pick her up. Before that, Deacon made her bacon and eggs for breakfast and watched her like a hawk while she ate it. Didn't say a word. It was unnerving. He had these eyes that seemed to be able to guess too much about her.

When they went to leave, standing in the parking lot, Watty just gave him this Look.

Deacon shook his head and looked away.

"It's there," Watty said. "You know it is. I saw the look on your face last night. You need to hear the recording. It's like nothing I've ever heard."

Rayna listened from the front seat of Watty's car. What the hell were they talking about, she had no idea. Probably would never see that guy again, she figured.

But a week later, Watty got her into the studio to try out some new songs, and there he was. All grumpy looking and messed up hair, with a guitar on his shoulder waiting impatiently.

She opened her mouth, closed it again. And picked up the sheet from the first song to read the lyrics.

_You're goodbye gets me every time. _

It was the beginning of something real and crazy, a ride neither of them could have ever imagined. She spent the next two years living with Watty and Anna, finishing school, searching for paying gigs, and playing every fair and small town festival she could get. Deacon was finally having his own string of luck, selling tons of songs, playing with her and in his own band, working on recording his own album. She got an offer to make an album of her own, and took it. It wasn't a huge label by any means, and a new one, but she had to start somewhere.

Her and Deacon didn't date in all those first 5 years, but they were good together. Good writing partners, good friends. By the time she was 20, she'd moved out of Watty and Anna's, and into the apartment he still shared with Vince and his girlfriend Carmen. The place was crowded as hell, and she didn't understand why now that things were finally going right, those guys couldn't get a bigger place.

It only had two bedrooms. Which meant Rayna and him shared a bed. Sharing a bed as in, he got the bed on the even nights and the couch on the odd nights.

They weren't around much back then anyway, so it didn't make much difference when they were out on the road on the crappy old tour bus. But when they were home it made for some pretty amusing sleeping arrangements.

Deacon would lay in bed and smell her perfume on his pillow from where she'd slept the night before.

She'd turn on the tv in the living room and there would be a porno left in the vcr.

"Rayna! Why the hell does my pillow smell like flowers?"

"Dammit, Deacon," she yelled from the living room. "Why is there naked girls on the tv again?"

From the other bedroom Vince would yell "Aw, just share the bed and do it already!" And then the sound of Carmen smacking him to shut up. Laughter from three different rooms would echo.

She'd go to sleep on that couch smiling.

It was a good life. The life of musicians. Rayna was was happier than she'd ever been living in Lamar's gated mansion. They weren't quite making it big yet, but they were getting there.

###########################

Rayna got so lost in her memories for a few minutes she nearly forgot about the pot that was now smoking on the stove.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," she muttered as she turned down the gas and grabbed a spoon.

Lucy chuckled and took another sip of her coffee. "It was real nice of you to invite me to stay for dinner."

"Well, you know, Deacon really is a much better cook than I am," she said. "But he's playing in Knoxville tonight and won't be home until Friday, so I thought the girls and I would like to have your company."

"Bet y'all miss him when he's gone."

"We do," she said. "But you know, you do what you gotta do. Lord knows I spent enough years on the road leaving everyone behind. It's his turn to get the spotlight now for once. I'm pretty happy just staying here in Nashville running the label."

"You said you didn't date for the first five years? When did that all change?"

"Oh…." Rayna said with a small smile. "I guess that year was the year I got the gig opening for George Strait. Everything changed then…."

##################################

They threw her a party for her 21st birthday at the Station Inn.

She was amazed as she stood back and looked at the crowd, all the friends she'd made in the last 5 years, the life she'd built for herself.

Even her father had come by the party briefly. It was the first time she'd seen him in years. He wouldn't say he was proud of her, but he asked her to come by the house on Sunday for dinner. It was a small victory on her part. He was still her daddy and she loved him.

The best present had come just a little while earlier, when this new manager guy Watty had suggested she hire had given her the news. They wanted her to open for George Strait.

It was weird to need a manager now, but Watty was right, it was too big to be handling herself. He seemed like a decent guy, his name was Bucky something-or-another. For the life of her she was terrible with names. Deacon always had to quiz her before the parties and label events, or she'd just call everyone "hey you." Couldn't do _that _anymore.

She couldn't believe what Bucky had told her. She was still pinching herself 10 minutes later. This was the big time now. She'd really made it. This was a huge break. Not just for her, she knew, but for Deacon too. She'd told Bucky flat- out she wasn't doing anything without him leading her band.

He was in the crowd tonight too, across the room there. She met his eye and raised her beer.

He raised his too and gave her a grin.

Across the room, Carmen stood next to him, and smirked. "You don't have a chance in hell."

He scowled at her. "Please. She's like my sister."

"Don't you have a sister already?"

"Don't you have a boyfriend to babysit?"

Carmen waved it off. "I'm not his keeper. We're on the outs again anyway. He'll probably show up on my caller ID in a week when he needs bail money. Rayna looks pretty good, though, huh? I do good work."

She did.

Rayna was all dressed up tonight, thanks to Carmen. With her hair on top of her head, six inch heels, and a sparkly silver dress that was short enough to make her long legs seem 10 miles longer. He'd noticed. So had every other guy in the room. He wanted to yank the hem of that dress down about 12 inches.

He couldn't take his eyes off her as she crossed the room. Five years ago, the age difference between them had seemed like a lifetime. Now it seemed like water under the bridge. She _had_ grown up, before his eyes. He didn't know how lucky he'd gotten enough to watch her do it.

"Hey there," Rayna said, as she approached. She looked so happy, her eyes were just absolutely shining. "Did you hear the news? George Strait, here we come!"

"I heard," he said, forcing a smile. "We?"

"Hell yeah," she said without hesitation. "I'm not doing that without you."

"I don't know, Ray," he said quietly. "I got a lot of stuff going on trying to finish this solo album and all…"

She looked hurt. "What? I mean, really, this is goddamn _George Strait_, Deacon. How can you say no to that?"

He couldn't look her in the eye. Or she was gonna know.

"I'll think about it," he said. "That's all I can promise." He disappeared into the crowd.

She was left there feeling confused and a little ticked off. Why did men have to be such idiots?

_Well,_ she told herself. _I guess if they weren't, women in country music wouldn't have much to write about. _

A few days later, she came home from a rehearsal, and he was moving his stuff out of the apartment with Vince and the guys.

He wanted to have it done before she got back. No such luck.

And she was clearly pissed.

"What's this?" She said, standing in the parking lot with her arms across her chest.

"I bought a house," he said simply.

A house. He bought a house, she thought. It took awhile to buy a house. He had known for months and not mentioned it.

"You coulda told me that."

"Does it matter?" He said as he closed the tailgate and leaned against the truck. Looking anywhere but at her.

Vince pointed at the sky. "We gotta get a move on, or you're going to have a new shack full of old furniture that smells like a wet dog."

"Go on," he waved them off. "Key's on the ring. Take this truck and I'll meet you guys over there with the last load in a little while."

So they were left alone standing in the parking lot with the storm clouds building in the east rapidly.

"Well…..yeah, it matters," Rayna sputtered.

"Why?"

"I don't know," she said. "It just does."

"It's just getting too hard," he said quietly. He couldn't keep standing there, with her looking up at him with that hurt look on her face, or he was going to do something he'd been trying not to do for a long time now. "You're better than us, Ray. Better than all this. You're successful now. You can get your own place, your own everything. And probably a better guitar player than me too."

He turned to get into the truck. Raindrops were hitting the sidewalk now at a rapid pace.

"You really think that?" She called.

Damn if she wasn't right on his heels.

She cocked her hands on her hips and slammed the door closed before he got in. "You really see me as someone who thinks I'm better than everyone else?"

"You are. Better 'n all of us, that's for sure."

"Hell with that!"

He shook his head and smiled. "I gotta go."

"What did you mean?" she said, her voice oddly quiet. "About it getting too hard?"

He sighed, and looked her straight flat in the eyes. The pretty blue eyes that somewhere in the last year or so he was pretty sure he'd fallen in love with, which was the last thing he ever wanted. He didn't do attached, he didn't do all that happy crap, and that would be what she wanted. That was what she deserved. "It's getting too hard…to share a life and a bed with you…and not "share a bed" with you, you know?"

Rayna drew in a deep breath. "Dammit," she said, her voice a little shaky. "If that's what you've been thinking all this while, why didn't you just say so?" And she kissed him. _She_ kissed _him._ Just like that she was in his arms, and he'd be a saint if he could stop it, because he wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anything. The rain was beating down on them painfully, and all his furniture was getting wrecked, and he didn't give a damn because Rayna was in his arms.

"This is going to ruin everything," he murmured when they finally came up for air, soaked to the skin and water dripping off their noses. He pushed her wet hair off her face, and she had rain drops on her eyelashes. And she just had this smile...

"Wrong," she whispered, laughing. "This is gonna be the best thing that ever happened to you. Think we should go upstairs and say goodbye to that apartment and all you're pretty words on those walls."

"There's no bed left in that room."

"Who the hell said we needed a bed?"

And just like that, five years of friendship turned into a love neither one of them had ever expected.

A week later, she was living in the house in east Nashville with him. She was 21, he was 25, and they bought new furniture.


	7. Chapter 7

"Alright," Lucy said finally one Wednesday morning as they sat on the patio sipping their coffee. It was a beautiful warm fall day, not many of those left til winter hit. She'd been working on this book project with Rayna for about two months now, and it was more enlightening than she had ever imagined. She hadn't told them, but it was the last book she planned on writing. Had to make it a good one. "Should we bring up the elephant in the room? Deacon's alcoholism is one of the things we haven't talked about. How it affected you."

Rayna frowned. "It's in the past and I want it to stay there. Can we just….say that he went to rehab and leave it at that? I don't want any of the details of it in the book. We're happy now. Getting married next month, figuring out how to be a family. He's come a long way, and we are all very proud of him. I just…don't know if I want to dredge all that up."

"It's your story, honey," she said kindly, patting Rayna's arm. "I'm just writing it. So whatever you want on the pages is up to you."

Rayna sighed. "You know, I never have really talked about any of this with anyone."

"Understandable. You're a very private person."

" I felt…pretty alone at that time. Tandy didn't understand why I stuck by him. My mother was gone, my father was busy making shady business deals….."

Lucy took the notebook in her hand and closed it. Then she stuck it back in her purse.

"What are you doing?" Rayna said. "Are we done for today?"

"No siree." Lucy said. "But right now I'm not being a writer, I'm just being a friend. Sometimes you just need someone to listen."

Rayna stared out the window for a long time. "It's hard to think about," she said softly. "Or talk about. That was a very painful time in both of our lives. It didn't start out that way. I mean we had four years that were just…unbelievable. Amazing. I don't even know how to find the right words."

"Yes I remember. I saw some of your early shows," Lucy said with a chuckle. "You couldn't have denied you were in love if you tried."

"On stage we were so in sync, so…well, we would just go onstage and pour our hearts out to each other," Rayna said with a small smile. "Gosh, when I look back now… Maybe it was too good, or something. Maybe I was too lucky. I went from opening act to headlining tour, to number ones and CMAs in four years. It was all so fast."

"Oh honey, now luck has nothing to do with it. You were always meant to be on that stage, you know that. You've had talent since the day you were born. You had to work just as hard as anyone else in this business to get where you are."

"Well thank you," she patted Lucy's hand. "I know you have worked with the best and that means a lot to hear you say that."

"When did things start going wrong?"

"After Vince," Rayna said without hesitation.

"After?"

"After he died." She said. "You know, I'm sorry he died. He was a good friend to both of us for a long time, before he started dragging Deacon downhill with him. But a lot of the alcohol and drug abuse, I blame on him. He didn't cause it, but he sure as hell aggravated it….."

#####################################

That night was ingrained in her mind forever. Vince coming to the house wanting to drag Deacon off to some party with him in Baker Hills. He was already half-lit up and had a beer in his hand as he stood there on the front porch.

Rayna answered the door.

She was tired. They'd just come off of a 6 month tour. She just wanted to be at home with Deacon, in their house that had waited for them patiently all these months, not on a bus. With just him. Fall asleep and wake up in their bed in his arms. They had only a month off before going back out again.

And she was mad. "What the hell are you doing here?" She demanded. "Coming here drunk and trying to convince him to go out and do something stupid? You want to tank your life Vince, go do it, but don't keep dragging him down with you. You coulda been a lot more, you know." He'd been her drummer for the first couple years, but finally she'd let him go when getting wasted and high became more important than showing up for gigs.

"You know what I know," Vince said, taking a swig of his beer. "You used to be fun, Rayna. Goddamn, you're just like Carmen. No fun at all."

Deacon came out on the porch behind her. "What're you doing here?" He asked, noticing the bottle in Vince's hand. He had cut down a lot on the partying in the last year, especially with Vince. Partly because of Rayna. Mostly because his own habits had started to scare him a little. A bender with Vince sometimes lasted 3 days. Sometimes you ended up in another state. Or jail.

Rayna looked like she was ready to start throwing punches.

"I got this." he gently pushed her back into the house and went out on the front porch to talk to Vince and closed the door behind him.

Rayna didn't know what exactly got said or when the fists started flying but she knew Deacon came back in the house with a busted lip and a black eye. She never saw Vince alive again.

Cops were banging on their front door the next morning. Vince had wrapped his car around a tree. He was gone. And Deacon had to be the one to go down there and identify him. They found an empty Jose Cuervo bottle in the remains of his front seat.

It only took a week before Deacon fell into a harder state than Rayna had ever seen him.

She came home from a label party one night he hadn't wanted to go to, and found him laid out in a lawn chair in the backyard. A bottle of Jack Daniels dangled from one hand, and a cigarette smoldered in the other.

She hated when he smoked, and he knew it. Said it was just another thing he couldn't quit. He wouldn't let her touch the things. She needed to protect her voice, he said.

His face, his eyes had such pain that she hurt just looking at him. She wished there was some way to take it away.

"I shoulda stopped him," he mumbled.

"It's not your fault, babe," she said softly.

"I'm no good for you, Ray. No good for anyone. I'm just like him."

She started to wonder which him he meant, Vince or his father. He'd mentioned his father in bitter passing words a few times lately, and she knew it was on his mind.

"Don't talk like that, I love you. Come on in the house, okay?"

He leaned on her as she walked him inside and to the leather couch and then he passed out cold.

She sat by him on the floor and held his motionless hand and cried. It wouldn't be the last time she sat next to him and watched him sleep off a drunken bender. She'd sit by his side in hospital rooms while they pumped the booze and pills out of his stomach. She'd sit outside courthouses and jails, and drag him out of hotel rooms, and have moments where she sat next to him screaming in his face, slapping him, scared that he was really dead this time until he'd finally blink his eyes and mumble in confusion because he really _didn't_ know where he was or how he'd gotten there. It wasn't the last time she'd sit next to him and cry.

But it was the one she would remember the most, because it was the first time.

###########################

The first time Deacon went to rehab, he went willingly. He was willing to try, he said. For Rayna. He knew his drinking had gone to a scary level of out of control when he found out Rayna was employing a backup guitarist to hang around every show "just in case" he didn't show up. He didn't want to be that guy. He didn't want to turn into Vince, or his father, and he knew he was dangerously close to that ledge. Rayna walked him in. And promised she'd been waiting when he came back out.

They only kept him in there for 7 days. Even now looking back on it, Rayna thought that was ridiculous. All it did was give him a 7 day long headache and make him ornery and tired from 7 days of withdrawal symptoms when he came out.

She drove him home and he didn't speak.

So many things she wanted to ask him, but truthfully she was scared. Because she knew in her heart this hadn't worked. And wondered how long it would be before it started again.

It only took two days before a night happened when he didn't come home. She tried to tell herself that he was probably out just wandering around walking it off trying to spare her, but the next morning when she was driving to Soundcheck, she found his truck parked in the park n ride lot she passed every day.

Oh, he was having no problem getting some sleep now. He was passed out on the seat of the truck with an empty bottle of Scotch on the seat next to him. Sleeping like a rock.

She left him there, troubled. Not even angry at him, just sad. He probably wouldn't want her to know, she thought, that he had failed. He'd wake up sober, come home, and pretend like it didn't happen. And so would she.

She wondered what was going to become of him if he couldn't even make it two days.

#############################

The Second time he went to rehab, it was for 60 days. And court appointed after a DUI.

He went out on a bender with band mates one night and rolled his truck off of a curve north of the city limits, and woke up in jail. Didn't even remember walking away from it without a scratch. Rayna was playing in Austin. Since he hadn't shown up when they were getting ready to leave, she sighed and told the bus driver to take off without him. Later, when she got his drunken message after the show, she called Tandy to bail him out of jail.

Rayna's sister had told him exactly what she thought in one sentence when she dumped him in his driveway. "Get your shit together, Deacon. Or let her go."

That sentence stayed with him for a long time.

He tried real hard, tried to be the sober and dependable guy she'd fallen in love with. They had to take a red-eye flight home from Portland to be there in time for his court hearing a month later, and go in the courthouse through a back door so the press wouldn't get wind of her being there. She held his hand. She listened to the judge tell him to get his shit together, just like Tandy had.

And then she took him back to rehab, because it was part of his court sentence. A different, more expensive, more exclusive one this time. One she paid for.

Once again she walked him in there.

His eyes, when he turned to walk in, they just broke her. Pleading. _Please be here._

"I can't make any promises, Deacon," she said quietly as they stood outside the clinic. "Can you?" She knew Deacon's childhood had been much worse than hers, and now with Vince's death on top of it, it was slowly killing him. He didn't like to talk about any of it much, if ever. She tried to understand the pain that he was trying to drink away, she tried to be there for him. But it was never enough. He had demons following him around she couldn't even begin to understand.

"Do what you need to do. For you." He kissed her forehead. "I love you, Ray. See you in two months."

He had to get it right this time. For Rayna.

She forced herself to walk away without crying.

Then she went out on tour. With a new guitar player she pretended to like, and her heart left at home in Nashville.

############################################

Rayna's voice caught as she told Lucy parts of the story she'd never told anyone. How terrifying it had been to watch him self-destruct. How she'd watched him try so hard and fail so many times. How she'd loved him anyway, despite of it all. She wanted those dreams they'd made together.

But he blamed himself for so many things, and those demons ate him alive from the inside out. He spent more time passed out in hotel rooms and drunk in the back of the bus than actually playing on stage with her. They stopped writing. They stopped sleeping together. He was just existing, and she was trying to make a career. Their roads had never been farther apart.

So each time she found another place for him, one with a better program, one that costed more of her hard-earned money. One that swore it was different than other places. She missed the Deacon she had fallen in love with, and she knew this was the end of them unless it worked.

So off he went to rehab again. For the third time, then fourth time in three years. They were done, she told him as she walked him in to #4. But she would always love him and she wanted him to get better. And she still wanted them to be friends.

That was the worst joke he'd ever heard.

But once again he kissed her forehead, and wiped away the tears in her eyes she was trying like hell to hold back, and turned around and walked in.

He was always afraid when he walked back out she wouldn't be there. And she always was. But the fourth time was different.

Because when he came out, she was dating Teddy Conrad.

########################

Rayna was there when he came out, and he coulda swore he let out out a sigh of relief he'd been holding in for two months.

But it was different now. She hugged him, and something was….different.

"You uh….staying at the house?" He asked tentatively.

She shook her head slowly. "I've been staying with Tandy. Don't worry I got everything…you know…taken care of. Payments. Utilities. Your one plant," she gave him a half smile.

He looked confused.

Rayna sighed. "We have to talk, okay?"

She drove them to a spot near the river, a beautiful spot with weeping willow trees and an old stone bridge across the water. They sat on the picnic table, knee to knee.

"I like to come here sometimes," she said softly. "To think. Away from the city and everyone watching."

"It's nice. Peaceful." They'd talked about getting a place on a lake someday. Just somewhere to get away from it all. He wondered if that would ever happen now.

Somehow he knew what she was afraid to say.

"I've been….seeing someone else." She said.

His jaw moved up and down real slow. "Okay."

She started to cry. "I love you, you know that. But I can't keep doing this. It's too hard to watch you try to kill yourself over and over again."

"Okay," he said again. "Can you please take me home."

He got up and walked back to her car.

The ride back to the house in East Nashville, neither one of them said a word.

He just got out of her truck and walked up to the house, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets.

He looked so broken, that she wondered if it was the right thing to do. God, what if it set him off all over again?

###################################

It had been Tandy's idea to set her up on the date with Teddy. Rayna hated the idea. She hated blind dates. She was too busy worrying about her headlining tour, the debut of her album that had just come out, and Deacon. Worrying about him every day and if it was really going to work this time.

Finally, Rayna agreed reluctantly to go. And fell into a few dates with Teddy, then a slow relationship. He was nice, treated her real good. He was the kind of guy who pulled out your chair for you, and held the door, and brought you flowers every time. She didn't _need _those things, but it was nice to have them.

She just wished she could feel even a fraction of something besides like and admiration. Teddy was stable, smart, he was on his way to being a successful Nashville businessman. He'd be a great success one day. He was husband material, Tandy said. He'd been a good husband and a good father.

But she didn't love him, she argued.

Tandy didn't see how that even mattered. She thought the word "love" was a complete joke. People didn't married because they were in love. They got married because they needed a partner in life.

Rayna thought maybe she and Tandy were both a hell of a lot more damaged by Lamar and Virginia than she thought if her sister had that opinion.

She didn't see Deacon again for months. Not that she didn't think about him. She missed him so bad she cried herself to sleep every night.

#############################################

"Tell me about Maddie," Lucy said, pouring more coffee from her thermos. "That sweet girl of yours. How she came to be. We'll get to Daphne too, but Maddie first."

"Well," Rayna said slowly. "Deacon and I got back together….briefly…after his 4th stint in rehab…. Very briefly. He was doing real good, you know, but something…always set him off. Like when Vince died. That was just…awful. He's never stopped blaming himself for that."

"What was it that time?"

She sighed. "I didn't know at the time, but it was his father. He got notice that his father died in prison."

"That's a terrible tragedy for him to have to live with," Lucy said, shaking her head. "Just terrible. No wonder that poor man turned to drowning in a bottle."

"It was," Rayna said quietly. "And I know how that feels. To live with it. I never made peace with my father before he died. And he never made peace with his either. I don't know that either of our fathers deserved it."

"But you don't make peace to die," she said. "you do it to live with yourself."

"Maybe," Rayna looked unconvinced. "Anyway, Deacon had been sober for a long time then, almost a year. And then with all that with his father, it started all over again. I found out I was pregnant, and I knew this time I needed to let him go. It wasn't just about me anymore. I had to protect our child. So I did. I let him go. He went to rehab for the fifth time, and by the time he got out, Teddy and I were married and the whole world was so happy because we were having a baby."…

##################################

Rayna found out she was was pregnant in a gas station.

"Ugh," she grumbled. "Bucky, can you have them stop at the next BP? I just feel awful. I need some ginger ale or something and all we got in here is beer and water. This is what I get for having so many guys in my band."

"Sure," Bucky looked at her worriedly. "You okay?"

"I'm sure I'm fine," she waved him away. "Just probably got a bug or something. All these people breathing germs on me all the time, I'm surprised I'm not dead yet."

The bus stopped and she was the only one that got off. She paid for her ginger ale, and feeling even worse, headed for the bathroom in the back of the store. If she was gonna lose her breakfast, she didn't need 12 guys and her manager hear her do it in a 3x3 plastic room on a bus.

She didn't want to admit that she'd been feeling awful for a few weeks now, trying to attribute it to the stress, the traveling, not enough sleep etc. But this was getting worse, not better. She was opening for sold out shows the next three nights. She couldn't afford not to be at her best.

She ended up throwing up in the bathroom for a half hour, while an entire tour bus full of band members waited outside in the parking lot to get the show back on the road.

God, she felt awful.

Rayna gingerly washed her face in the dirty bathroom sink, and reached for the paper towels.

She noticed a row of metal machines on the wall, selling condoms, tampons, and pregnancy tests. A padlock on the side kept thieves from running off with its contents.

_Lovely_, she thought. _Only in California_.

But the reality suddenly slammed into her.

"Like hell I am," she said aloud to no one but herself. Her voice echoed off the tile walls.

Against her better judgement, she put 2 dollars in the last slot.

3 minutes later she was looking at a plus sign on a cheap gas station pregnancy test. It could have been wrong. But she knew it wasn't. She also knew there was no possible way this was Teddy Conrad's baby. Memories floated through her mind of that night a few months ago when Deacon had brought her to the lakehouse he'd just bought. It was like a dream, what they'd always wanted. Maybe they hadn't been too careful that night. At the time, she hadn't really cared. It had worked this time, she thought, his fifth time in rehab. Things were going to be different. He'd asked her to marry him, and like a fool, she'd believed they were behind the worst and happily ever after wasn't too far off.

The next morning, he hadn't remembered anything. Not the love-making, or the ring on her finger, or the empty promises. All taken away by the empty bottle of Jack lying on the living room floor.

She left. She called Coleman, and the next day he was back in rehab. Cole had practically dragged him in there by his hair this time, Deacon kicking and hollering all the way.

Tears rolled down her face, and angrily she swiped them away.

She had never felt so alone. Sitting there in a damn dirty gas station bathroom, contemplating how she was a) going to tell her drunk ex-boyfriend he was about to be a father b) going to tell her current boyfriend that her drunk ex boyfriend was about to be a father and c) go onstage in front of 50,000 people in 10 hours and not puke her guts out. D) oh by the way, apparently her newfound country music career on the rise was going to include _raising a child_.

When she was done feeling alone, she just got mad.

She was mad at Deacon for not being there with her and not being able to stay sober to save his own life. Literally.

She was mad at Tandy for trying to force her to date Teddy.

And she was mad at herself for being mad about all of the above.

Sometimes being a strong independent woman was sure as hell overrated.

10 minutes later she had dried her tears, washed her face, and walked out to the bus, convincing herself that it wouldn't be so bad. She was 27 years old. Well old enough to be able to take care of a baby. The tabloids were going to have a heyday with it, but screw them. People had babies all the time and the world didn't end. It was nobody's damn business anyway.

No more tears, she told herself.

She was Lamar Wyatt's daughter, goddammit. You didn't cry. In front of anyone.

"You okay?" Bucky asked her when she prepared to climb back on the bus armed with_ three _bottles of ginger ale and a box of saltine crackers shoved in her purse. "You look kind of pale."

"I'm fine," she said determinedly. She looked around. They were literally in the middle of nowhere. She could see nothing for miles except this gas station and 3 houses. "Where the hell are we anyway?"

"Madeline, California." Bucky said with a shrug. "I guess it's some kind of ghost town, used to be a railroad depot. Gas station owner said about a hundred miles to Sacramento."

She gave the little town one last look as she climbed back on the bus feeling like a different person than the one who had gotten off it a little while earlier, her life irrevocably changed now.

"Madeline, huh?" she asked softly.

Sounded like a nice name for a little girl.


	8. Chapter 8

"Alright, be good girls and I'll see you in a week," Rayna said, kissing them each on the cheek. "Call if you need anything."

"Bye, Mom. Love you." Daphne hugged her and bounded off to where Teddy waited in the car.

Maddie had a frown on her face. "Couldn't I just stay here tonight and go to Dad's in the morning? Deacon's coming back this afternoon, isn't he? I have a new song I wanted to play for him."

"Maddie…." Rayna said with a sigh. "We've talked about this lots of times. I know this is hard but you should still go. You don't want to hurt…Teddy's feelings. You know how much he loves you."

Maddie looked unconvinced. "Well, give Dad a hug from me, okay? A big one."

"Will do, sweetheart."

She walked slowly out the door with her shoulders slumped a little.

Lucy watched the scene with a keen observer's eye from her spot on the sofa as they left.

Rayna sunk onto the sofa next to her with a sigh. "Gosh, that's still hard every time."

"She calls them both Dad," Lucy noted.

"Now, she does," Rayna said with a smile. "It took awhile to get to that."

"Do you think Teddy treats her any differently now?"

Rayna shook her head slowly. "I think there's been a natural progression that she's gotten closer to Deacon. They're a lot alike. Her and Teddy do battle a lot. He doesn't understand her. He tries, and he's loved her since the day she was born, but Maddie is a thinker. And when she's got something to say, it's usually something with a deeper meaning behind it."

"Sounds like someone else I know."

"At first," Rayna said. "When I found out I was having Maddie, I thought I could just do it myself. You know me, always have to be independent. Tandy and my father were the ones who convinced me marrying Teddy was the right thing to do, and it was right at the time. I wanted my child to have a family. And Teddy, he never treated Maddie as anything but his own. He was there since the day she was born."

"Do you regret that? That you didn't tell Deacon right away?"

Rayna shook her head slowly. "I regret that I hurt him and Maddie. But it was the right choice at the time. And we've all come to peace with that. And Teddy and I…we did have a good marriage for a long time. I like to think there's a difference between loving someone and being in love. And I did love him, for a little while. We had a good marriage, and a good family."

"You must have. You had Daphne."

Her smile widened at the memory. "Yes we did. I believe in the natural order of things, everything happened the way it was supposed to for a reason."

Deacon walked in the door that moment, and dropped his bags on the floor. His eyes were only for Rayna, though he did acknowledge that Lucy was there.

Lucy chuckled and excused herself to get something from her car.

10 minutes later when she returned, they were snuggled on the sofa, both looking content and happy.

"Lucy was asking me about when Daphne was born," Rayna told him. "And I was about to tell her about your mad race to the hospital."

Lucy raised her eyebrows. "I might need more coffee. This is going to be a legendary story, I suspect."

He laughed at the memory. "That'll be one to tell our grandchildren some day, huh? How Daphne was almost born in the front seat of a Chevy truck."

"Oh nonsense," Rayna said airily. "We had plenty of time…."

##############################

Rayna always secretly thought it was some act of god that Deacon had missed being there when his daughter was born, but he'd been pretty darn close to being there when Daphne made her entrance into the world. Karma had a way of coming back around.

They were in the studio that afternoon listening to a stack of demos a mile high. Well, what Rayna was doing was hiding in the air conditioning because it was hot as hell outside for September.

"You look miserable," Deacon said. "Why don't you just go home and crawl into bed, Ray."

She was 9 months pregnant, her belly sticking way out in front of her. He thought she looked cute as hell, even in the throes of misery.

It had taken a few years, but they were in a good place now. He was back in her band. He was sober. Watching her make a life with someone else hurt like hell, but he knew she deserved someone who could keep all the promises you made on your wedding day.

It still hurt every day, and he knew he'd never love anyone else. But she seemed happy. And that was all he really wanted. She must love the guy, he figured, if she was having another baby with him. Probably another girl, he guessed. That wouldn't be so bad. Sweet little Maddie would have a playmate. He couldn't help but smile at the thought of Maddie. She lit up his world every time he saw her.

Now, at the current moment, Rayna didn't look too happy. He didn't know too much about having babies, but she was making a face something awful like she was in pain. And she seemed to be doing it about every five minutes.

"I just have to finish these," she said, wincing again, and rubbing a spot on her belly. "Or I won't get them done. Man, this one must really like the music. Doing somersaults in there."

He grinned. "Maybe that one's another musician."

"Maybe," she said. "Right now I wish it would just settle down a little."

He reached over and touched her stomach. It was hard as a rock.

"Jesus, Ray! That can't be right. Are you in labor?"

"I don't know….maybe?" she hedged.

"Well hell, we're going to the hospital. Why didn't you say something two hours ago!"

"No," she said firmly. "I'm fine. Maddie's labor took hours. I just want to finish listening to these….." She made that face again and hissed out a breath.

Deacon gave her a Look, and hoisted her out of the chair. "We're going to the goddamn hospital. _Now, _Rayna!"

She was hurting too much to protest.

He took the side streets to Vanderbilt. 5 miles wasn't much but it could be made into 2 hours in afternoon traffic.

This was never how he'd imagined it would be. Driving her to the hospital to go have another man's child. Having to make the awkward call her husband to meet them. Sometimes he thought the Man Upstairs must really have it in for torturing him.

"I think," Rayna said on the seat next to him, trying to breathe through the pain. "That we really need to hurry."

"I'm tryin, darlin. I thought you said this took hours!"

"Well it did," she protested. "Last time."

"This one's gonna be a little girl like you, Ray," Deacon said. "Demanding as hell and she ain't even seen the light of day yet. I bet she'll be singing country songs before she's walking."

She laughed despite of her pain. And then started to cry.

Damn. She never cried. Even all those years ago when he made her watch Old Yeller, he'd sit there bawling like a damn baby and she would just roll her eyes and say "he didn't _really _die. It's a movie, Deacon."

"Don't you cry that baby out in the front seat of my truck," he tried to make a joke. "Really. How would we explain that one to Teddy?"

She couldn't answer, she was gripping his door handle so hard that her knuckles were turning white.

He screeched the truck to a stop in the Emergency Room entrance, and there was a bunch of nurses and doctor's waiting there. And Teddy. Teddy was there with Maddie clinging to his hand.

Maddie saw him, and she flew into his arms. She was four now, a big girl going to school this fall, and a pretty little thing with straight golden-brown hair and big curious eyes. He'd fell in love with that kid since the first time he saw her. She was always singing songs, and asking to strum his guitars, asking questions about everything. Up until last winter when Rayna had gotten pregnant again, she'd been out on the road with them every tour since she was six months old, his constant shadow.

"Can you stay with her?" Teddy asked begrudgingly as they were quickly putting Rayna in a wheelchair. "Until Tandy can get here?"

"No problem," Deacon said. "Just go."

So that's what he did. He watched them wheel Rayna away with Teddy to go off and have a baby, and he sat with Maddie and waited. Walked around the hospital with her. Let her eat a whole bunch of candy out of the vending machine.

Finally she seemed to be losing steam and slumped into a plastic chair.

He didn't know how kids had so much energy. Chasing her around for a mere hour had him wiped out.

"You excited that you're going to be a big sister?" He asked her.

Maddie frowned.

Uh oh he took that as a no.

"They're gonna like that dumb old baby better than me," she said flatly.

Deacon tried real hard not to laugh. "How could they like anything better than you? You're the best little girl in the world."

Maddie gave him a hilariously skeptical look that was far too mature for a four year old as if to say _I'm not buying that crap._

"Can we play your guitar?"

"Well, they're all at home right now. Maybe I can come pick you up next week when you're mama's busy with the baby, and we can play."

This seemed to hold her for a few minutes. But she was thinking. He could tell. He'd always been trying to figure out who Maddie was like. She sure had Rayna's stubborn streak, but she was a quiet thinker, an observer. She was her own kind of person already.

She jumped on his lap for a hug, and he let those tiny arms choke the life out of him for a minute.

"Uncle Deacon, if they like that baby better," she said with complete seriousness. "Can I be your little girl instead?"

Oh, she got him with that one. Just melted his heart. "Well darlin' I can guarantee that's not going to happen, because you have a mama and daddy that love you very much. But if you ever need something, I'll always be here, okay?"

She looked satisfied with that. "You promise?"

"Promise."

Tandy rushed through the ER doors then, just as the doctor came back out from the other direction.

Maddie had a new little sister. Daphne Faye Conrad was born on an early fall day when the leaves were just starting to turn colors, barely two hours after he'd demanded Rayna go to the hospital.

#################################

"Well, that IS quite a tale to tell your grandchildren some day," Lucy said with a smile. "Next time you go to the hospital three days early." She stood up and stretched her old bones. "I think that's enough for me for today. And the two of you have been making eyes at each other for the last 30 minutes. It's time for this old lady to get lost."

"Well..." Rayna said. "I mean, you could stay for dinner if you want. We love having you here."

"Another night," Lucy said. She patted Deacon's arm as she walked towards the door. "Good to see you home again, sonny."

"You too, Lucy," he said. "Always a pleasure."

Rayna walked her to the door, and she looked back to find him watching her with this intense look. "What?"

His eyes crinkled into the smile she loved so much. "Just thinkin, that's all."

"About what?"

"Oh, you know," he said, casually, pulling her down onto his lap on the sofa and kissing her senseless. "About next time."

"Next time, huh?" She said softly. "You think we should try to make that happen?"

He nodded. "I do."

"Guess we can leave it up to fate, right? See what happens?"

"Darlin, everything in our lives has been fate up to this point. I wouldn't have it any other way."


	9. Chapter 9

"So wonderful to see you again," Lucy was not shy about hugging Rayna as she came into the kitchen with her usual gusto on a Wednesday morning in October. "Married and such. "

It had been a whole month since they'd seen Lucy. They'd opted instead of a private honeymoon for a two week long vacation with the girls to Martha's Vineyard. It was perfect fall weather, tourist season over so no one bothered them, just relaxing in the little beachside cottage and enjoying quiet time as a family.

Rayna was happier than she'd ever been, looking down at that ring on her finger a million times a day, looking over at that man who was now her husband. Finally. She felt like everything in her life, everything that was going into Lucy's book, now had reasons behind it she hadn't understood until now. It had led her to this: finally this life she was supposed to be in, with Deacon and her girls, a life that was good and sweet and unbelievably happy.

"The sparkle is in your eye, my dear. I don't have to ask how it got there."

She had the grace to blush.

"Marriage looks good on you," Lucy said without qualms.

"Well, it feels good," Rayna said. "It feels right. Finally. Just…I feel so damn happy. Like everything is right with the world." She couldn't hide her smile. "I think Deacon and I are both walking around grinning like fools."

"Tell me about your marriage to Teddy." Lucy said, settling herself on a kitchen stool as she watched Rayna buzz around the kitchen. "Not that I'm raining on your happy parade, but that's about the only thing we haven't discussed yet."

"Well," Rayna said slowly. "You know how that came about….with Maddie and all. Sometimes I feel like I stayed with him because I owed him. And that's….not why you stay married to someone. It only works for so long before it falls apart."

#########################

From the outside, Rayna knew it had looked like they had the perfect life. She was a famous country music star, her career at the top of its game, he was a banker, dabbling in real estate on the side. They had two perfect daughters a beautiful home, the luxuries of life which most people never saw. But it was a forced, artificial happiness, the kind you put on your face because you didn't want to seem selfish or ungrateful.

It was about year nine into their marriage that Rayna started to admit to herself that she wasn't happy. And she didn't think Teddy was either. She tried to love him. She really did. Tried to imagine that she felt some deep connection to him, that he understood her, and she understood him. They worked well as a team, raising their daughters, making a house into a home, making a family. They both put in the effort. They both tried.

But sometimes she wondered if you should have to try so hard to love someone, to make it work. The effort in the relationship, she understood. The effort that went into feeling love for someone, she didn't understand why it should feel so hard.

One night laying in bed, he was almost asleep and she asked him. He was on his side of the bed, her on hers, facing away from each other. They almost never made love anymore. Giving each other excuses, letting each other get away with it. Too tired. Headache. Early morning ahead. Kids in the house. It was all excuses, and they both knew it.

Maybe it was her fault, she wondered. There had always been a gap between the two of them, and Deacon standing in the middle of it. Deacon would always be in the middle of that gap, because of Maddie, because of the truth he didn't even know. Maybe she'd let that gap get too wide, and it was too late to ever close it now. They were too far apart. It had just been a small break at the beginning and now it felt like the Grand Canyon.

"Why did you fall in love with me?" She asked, breaking the silence in the dark.

"What?" Teddy's voice sounded surprised.

"Why?" she repeated. "What made you fall in love with me? I mean, I was a mess. Pregnant with another mans child…" They hardly ever said those words out loud, even when only in each other's company. He had made her promise the day Maddie was born that she would never betray him by revealing the truth. And she hadn't. So many times, watching Maddie and how much she loved her "Uncle Deacon", she'd been tempted. But she kept the secret. It had been the right thing to do back then, she knew. But she wondered now, if it was the right thing to keep doing. She wondered if any of it was right anymore.

Teddy was quiet, contemplating. "You dazzled me," he said. "When you're onstage, I just watch you and you shine. And I get to come home to you every night."

She knew he couldn't see the lone tear falling from her cheek in the dark, but she brushed it away quickly anyway.

"Is that the answer you wanted?" He asked quietly.

She didn't know what answer she was looking for.

With a sigh, she rolled back over on her side. "Good night, Teddy."

"Good night, Rayna."

Minutes later, she heard his breathing slow again, deep and even, and only then did she let the tears fall.

That was truly the moment she knew it was over. Teddy loved her, same as she loved him, a kind of affection you felt for a person who you shared every day with. But they weren't IN love with each other. She dazzled him, he said. She didn't want to dazzle him. She didn't want him to be just another fan who saw her only as the Rayna onstage, who saw the glitter, and the shiny outfits, who heard the voice but not what was behind it.

She wanted someone whose heart beat in sync with hers. Who felt what she felt, who knew her when she didn't know herself.

Unfortunately, she'd lost that person a long time ago and it was much too late now to get him back.

#####################################

"So things went downhill after that," Lucy said in a reserved tone. "That's very hard. Letting any marriage go is painful, even one that's half-assed. Staying in it for the kids or for the wrong reasons is even harder."

"Well that's a nice way of putting it," Rayna said dryly.

Lucy shrugged and made a few notes on her paper. "I'm just saying it like it is." She said without qualms. "Personally I think everyone's got a soulmate somewhere. Just not everyone is lucky enough to find theirs. Too many people settle for the wrong person because they're just tired of waiting, or things aren't going their way."

"Did you find yours?"

"Yes," Lucy said with a smile. "And that's your one question for the day."

"Did you marry him?"

"Ah, that's two questions," she scolded. "Now back to the defunct marriage."

Rayna made a face. "Didn't we cover enough of that?"

"It must have been very painful, having to deal with all that in the public eye and keep your stage face on."

Rayna shrugged with a sigh and went back to packing the girls lunches. "It was," she confessed quietly. "Especially after I found out Teddy had stolen that money. I couldn't trust him after that and whatever force there had been for us to make it work, even because of the girls…it was gone. We lost the willpower, I guess. Teddy went off and found…comfort in Peggy. And I…."

"You still loved Deacon," Lucy said without hesitation.

Rayna's face softened at the mention of him. "I always loved him. Even when we couldn't be together, he was just…such a part of me. Loving him was as natural as breathing. We've had our rough moments, you know, with him finding out about Maddie, and the accident, his relapse, but… he was always there. And I know he will always be there. I love him more than I did last week, or yesterday, or this morning, more every second. He_ is_ my other half."

Lucy nodded, satisfied. "That's what you do when you find your soulmate, sweetheart. You hold on for dear life, through every hurricane forced wind that blows your way. And when the storm is over, if you're still clingin to each other, you know it's the one."

Rayna smiled, loving the euphemism. "I guess you can say we made it through the hurricane. I'm just enjoying the sunshine and rainbows now."

Lucy closed her notebook and stood up. "Well, that's it, I think I'm good."

Rayna walked her to the door. "See you on Wednesday?"

"Nope," Lucy said cheerfully. "This is it. We're done."

"Wait- what?" Rayna said, stunned. "Really?"

"Yep."

"But…I mean…isn't there other stuff you want to talk about?"

"Well honey, I think you pretty much told me everything. Is there other stuff, _you_ want to talk about?"

"Well, I…guess not," she faltered. "I'm just…surprised. Will you come back and see us? Let me know when the book is done?"

"Don't worry, Mark will contact you. You probably won't see me again. I'm a busy old lady, you see. Trying to stay incognito. We don't want to blow Roger's cover," she winked and adjusted her Yankees cap. "You take care of those pretty girls and that fine looking guitar player of yours."

She laughed. "Well, I think they're really the ones who take care of me."

Lucy patted her arm. "You did just fine, Rayna, you hear that? You don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. We all got battles in our lives. What matters is how you face em."

And with that she got into her little beat up car and drove away.

###################################

**Six months later….. **

Rayna was awakened by a gentle shake of her shoulder, and she rolled over to see Deacon sitting on the side of the bed. He had such a look of sadness on his face that it sent her heart into panic mode.

"What?" She said, immediately starting to get up. "What's wrong? The girls?"

"No, they're fine," he said quietly. "But darlin….Lucy Hayes two days ago at Vanderbilt hospital."

Her heart dropped. "What? No…are you serious?"

"Her agent called Bucky. He said she knew she'd been sick for about a year or so, but didn't want anyone to know. Her heart was failing. I guess in the last few weeks she went downhill in a hurry and was hospitalized."

Rayna sunk slowly onto the sofa. "Why wouldn't she tell us?" She murmured. "Maybe we could have helped or something."

"Lucy was a pretty independent lady, you know that. I doubt it she would have even taken any help from anyone." Like someone else he knew.

She smiled sadly. "You're probably right. Did they say anything about funeral arrangements?"

"Yes, Bucky said it's family only. I told him we at least wanted to send flowers."

"But she was family to us! I want to be there."

"Yes, but I don't think she wanted her cover blown, even after she was gone. Maybe someone else will take up where Roger Marten left off." He handed Rayna a package that had been delivered by courier earlier that morning. "I have a feeling you know what this is."

She did. She knew even as she sunk back into the edge of the bed and ripped off the packaging . She stared down at it in her hands. The first copy of her and Lucy's book. A note on top said it was pending her approval. As long as she read it over and everything was fine, she could let Mark, Lucy's agent, know, and it would be sent to the printers and published early next year.

She opened the inside cover, and there was a newspaper clipping tucked inside, an obituary.

Lucille Hayes. Age 77. It just said she was survived by her children and grandchildren, and then simply stated "in her earlier years she was a journalist, and always ready to crack a good joke."

"That's it?" Rayna couldn't believe it. "I mean, she wrote hundreds of books, Deacon. She had a phenomenal career, and that's all the recognition she gets?"

He sighed. "I don't think she ever did it to be famous, Ray. I think it was….like the biggest joke of all, you know? She pulled one over on everyone, and you know what? I bet she's laughing up there in heaven right now at you worrying about this. Drinking her motor oil coffee and having a good laugh."

She let Deacon pull her into his arms. "I hope you're right. I just….will miss her, you know? I liked having her around all those months. She was good to us. And to the girls."

"She was," he agreed softly.

She traced her hands over the cover of the book with her face on it, all new and shiny and sparkling. _Rayna Jaymes: Rhinestone Dreams. _She knew before even opening it that no corrections were going to be needed. But to read her life on paper…to hand it over to that publisher and give the okay for the world to read it also…was still a little intimidating.

Lucy's words came back to her, from their last conversation. _We all have our battles. What matters is how you face them. _

Deacon's gentle hands squeezed her shoulders. "Why don't you go find a quiet place to read that, and I'll handle things around here the rest of the day."

Numb, she agreed with him, and went downstairs into her office, sinking into the worn leather sofa to read.

Taking a deep breath she opened the first page.

I _received a present when I was 11 years old that changed my life… _

It was dark by the time she emerged from the room. A whole day had passed. Supper done, the girls long in bed, the kitchen cleaned. They hadn't dared so much to even knock on the door.

He was asleep on the sofa waiting for her.

"Hey," she touched his face gently, his 5 o clock shadow rough under her hand.

He stirred and sat up.

She didn't know if a man should be called adorable, but she thought he was, all rumpled hair and brow furrowed in worry about her.

"You okay?"

"I'm okay." She said softly.

He touched the cover of the book in her hand. "Should I ask?"

"It's perfect," she murmured. "Absolutely perfect. Just enough and not too much. I couldn't have asked for a better writer. And friend." Lucy had captured the best and worst parts of her life in a way that was more amazing than she could have imagined it would turn out.

The last page was a picture of her and Deacon and the girls, the only pic of the girls she had decided to allow. It had been taken a few months ago backstage at one of her concerts, the four of them sitting on the edge of the stage, her on one end and Deacon on the other with the girls sandwiched in between. It was the perfect reflection of the person that stared back at her in the mirror every day now: one of a woman who was truly happy.

"I want to change the dedication, though," she said softly. "I know originally I had it dedicated to the girls, but…it seems right for it to be in Lucy's honor. You think that would be okay? No one would know, right?"

"Think that would be pretty neat."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Deacon's shoulder and sent a silent prayer to the heavens. _Say hi to my mama for me, Lucy. I bet if you ask her, she'll sing for you… _

_ The End _


End file.
